Hitman: I kind of saw it as a joke. That it's a sly nod to the tendency of wank-bank porn girls that kick ass, which has become such an annoying trend in both films and games. Transformers, Sucker Punch, Bayonetta, whatever. This kind of presents you with that and then breaks their noses in ultra close up shots.

Tomb Raider: I didn't mind the screams and emotion of the voice acting so much as the fact that she sounds downright American most of the time and then just seems to kind of remember that she's supposed to be British when she calms down a bit. It's not that her English accent is bad, it's that it's not THERE half the time. (This is where someone tells me the actress - whose name I didn't find on IMDB - is actually British, like when someone I know said Sharlto Copley had a completely terrible Afrikaans accent in District 9.) The gameplay seems solid, even if it is in trailer form. How well it plays remains to be seen, but it looks as if they've built the whole game around taking her out of her element as much as possible. Tied up, hanging off things, floating down streams, and she isn't even the Tomb Raider yet. I love that. I love games that dare to restrict you.

I always enjoyed the Tomb Raiders back in the day. They were the first games to give me a real kind of "I'm so good at this!" rush. I think it was TR3 where I was bounding along a path I hadn't seen before, blazing over all the obstacles, feeling like a fucking superhero. Since then, the Prince of Persia series kind of took over that, then God of War. This looks like it's changing tack slightly, which I like.

Dishonored: Looks quite cool, I have to say! Bethesda does have a track record of putting world above gameplay to some degree, so I'll be cautiously optimistic for now.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is being developed by Platinum Games, the guys who did Vanquish and Bayonetta. I'm hoping it'll play like a hybrid between them, but whatever it ends up being I have tons of faith in the developer that it'll be great.

@Gov Spy - Dark Souls is great if you like really hard, but interesting combat. The story is almost non-existant (a fancy cutscene at the begininning, and item descriptions is all you get) but it's an awesome experience to play. Though it's not really a hack and slash experience like Diablo (I've only played 2) it's hard because you've got to think about everything, all at once, but it does make the winning all the more exciting. Don't know about the others, but The Witcher 2 looks gorgeous, so there's always that.

Dark Souls actually has a story but it's definitely not in your face. And it's hard but fair. If you can't beat enemies somewhere it's usually because you shouldn't be in this area yet. The fight system is the best I've seen in a game like that so far.

Also, bought the indie bundle V for my mac, this one is really a no-brainer.

Dishonored is being made by Arkane Studios, who are probably the devs who have come closest to picking up the torch that Looking Glass Studios and Ion Storm Austin left. My hopes for it are extraordinarily high. And I want an MP3 of that re-jiggered What do We Do with the Drunken Sailor in the trailer.

@DJ - I dunno, MK9 (the most recent one) turned out pretty good all things considered.

@RenThing - three segments flashing red == dead. If you're still in warranty, ring MS and get it replaced. (four red segments just means the AV cable isn't plugged in properly, it's not the most useful of error systems...) Almost all the death issues are overheat related, which is why it's basically not happening anymore as the newer machines run on lower power and a lot cooler now.

I'm actually finally starting to wind down from the panic that comes with having to prep a demo for E3. Being in early June, and with most games taking two years to make and aiming to hit during the 'holiday' period means that you're usually in one of two places when E3 comes around.

Place 1: You've not actually got a lot to show yet because you're still sorting out how it plays. You might have one fairly representative section put together, so you spend a few weeks polishing just that bit for the show (see Tomb Raider or Bioshock Infinite last year)

Place 2: You're not that far off finished, but you're knee deep in the 'fix all the bugs!' phase so don't really have much time to stitch a demo together too. What you end up with for E3 is a series of sections you like that have been mostly bug fixed and you string them together (see Call of Duty and Gears of War from last year).

You're almost never in the position to say 'hey, games going through cert now anyway so we'll just take what we have now'.

Demo creation for E3 is also constrained by the venue you're going to be showing at. If you're part of one of the big press conferences then you'll probably either be doing a 2 minute videoclip, or a 5 minute live demo. Summing up how your game plays in just 5 minutes is damned hard, and very easy to make a mess of. It will also be all anyone remembers of your game from the show, no matter how strongly it actually demos down on the show floor (see 'Giant Enemy Crab' and so on...)

Most show floor demos run 10 to 15 minutes, and so have the chance to show more of the actual game. The Lollipop Chainsaw one I played last week is pretty much the same as the one I'll expect they'll run at E3. It had two sections from the final game (they're in place 2) you could pick, and each lasted around 10 minutes. Our E3 demo falls into this category too, and it's been hard work getting something we're all happy with.

E3 panic just starting for me, but it's not like I've got anything to prep. I just need to get to LA and write lots.

Currently sitting in an airport waiting for the plane to E3. It was supposed to be 6AM and now it's going to be 9:30AM instead. An alarm just went off for no reason, and unconcerned people made it stop after a minute. If it wasn't for this airport somehow having free wi-fi I'd be crawling up the walls out of sheer boredom.

Welp, a friend of mine gave me his copy of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and I'm finding that, after playing a bunch of games where I essentially said "fuck this" and ran in guns blazing, I need to learn how to be sneaky again. Lovely game!

And it's just as well that I'm learning how to be sneaky again, because after my little rant on here, I've pre-ordered Hitman: Absolution and through the use of a really long ethernet cable, I managed to download my pre-order bonus of the Sniper Challenge.

@RenThing: Good luck with getting a replacement for your XBox. I've got two of the older models, and one is Red Ringed to death. I bought it secondhand, with a warranty from Cash-Converters in the U.K, and I should get round to getting them to replace it.

I've got so many old PS2 games, it's frightening. It's not really worth my while selling them, as you get peanuts for them nowadays. Maybe one day some of them may become collector's items, even though I doubt it. Anyway, there are a few I guess I'll keep because they were so good.